WELCOME TO HYMN FOR THE LIVING POET IV
Dear Readers,
As some of you know, I hesitated to launch a fourth volume. My uncertainty derived from a vague anxiety about the perceived “greenness” of such a project with such a name. “April.” Really? “Verse?” Aïe! And “Hymn!” Laisse tomber. I wasn’t sure what intention I had with these words anymore, especially since April had begun presenting itself as one of the more volatile months of my professional, artistic, and familial life. What’s more, I found myself, each spring in Paris, watching the great heralding of National Poetry Month in the United States and wondering if the celebration of our cherished art form wasn’t becoming overrun with events, recordings, playlists, sonnets in pockets, and never-ending apostrophe. Had this become a circus? Was Verse of April relevant anymore?
Yet, the more I talked with people, online and in person, and even those who had never contributed or submitted or could claim avid fandom for the poets to whom the collection had already paid homage, I heard a resounding message that this project, dedicated to present witness to present poetry, to the talking to of the relationship between poets and especially while we are still here and still writing together, held something unique and, dare it be said, serious for our corner of the Internet.
Thank you for that vote of confidence, for feeling the intention of this project and how it wishes to separate from a certain hustle or commercialization of poetry. Thank you for showing up here, for reading and sharing in this space, and for searching out our contributors who each year reveal to us new dimensions of intimacy and attention so that we can hope to meet creation and creators on a sustainable and sustaining level.
Luckily, I talked myself down. I listened to you. And now, Verse of April is celebrating its ninth year, Hymn for the Living Poet its fourth edition. We are here once again, with all the words that brought us and with more, as a reminder that this act of homage is not just beautiful and honorific, not just one more event in a slew of many in April, but also proof, of the grit of years of sitting with someone’s language, someone’s universe and saying, yes, I hear you. Yes, your poetry matters to me.
I hope you will read on to listen to sterling-elizabeth arcadia, Chris Burke, Sylvie Kandé, Em Marie Kohl, Bronwyn Louw, Sofia Melka, Léon Pradeau, Jean-François Puff, Mimi Tempestt, Nikki Ummel, and Christian Yeo Xuan as they talk to the work of Ulrich Baer, Claude Ber, Anne Carson, Joël Des Rosiers, Derrick Harriell, Laetitia Keok, Jacques Roubaud, Kay Ryan, The Poetry Project, Truong Tran, and Sofie Wise.
Working with these texts in all the particularity of their gesture has been a great gift to me. And now it is to you they are turned.
Bonne lecture.
Carrie Chappell
Editor-in- Chief